Cotie McMahon went from being ignored at Ohio State to being the star of Ole Miss, scoring almost 20 points per game and winning SEC Player of the Week. But her real win isn’t just on the scoreboard. The senior forward is talking about the health battle that no one else saw, and how she almost lost her career before finding a coach who really listened.

McMahon talked about how her undiagnosed PCOS affected her time with the Buckeyes in a recent interview with Andscape.

“PCOS is a very systemic issue. It involves a lot of different systems. This kid is literally been fighting her whole life,” she explained. “It was just hard for me to open up and trust and allow people into my space. I just had to find myself again.”

PCOS is a serious condition that affects one in seven women and messes up their sleep, weight, and hormones. When McMahon told Ohio State coaches that she thought she suspected the condition, they didn’t believe her. Instead of looking into it, they pushed for more conditioning.

Things changed at Ole Miss. With the right medical care, she’s now scoring 19.4 points per game, the most she’s ever scored.

Then, Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin saw what leaders before her had missed.

“I think vulnerability happens when, if that’s something that you want, then you have to give it,” Coach Yo stated.

“After spending some time with her, I said, ‘Oh, this is a kid that just needs a hug and needs a mentor.’ She’s just having a chance to be around someone that looks like her in a space of not just as a coach, but also as a human.”

The numbers tell the whole story.

McMahon scored 33 points to beat Missouri, and she was named SEC Player of the Week not long ago. She plays almost 30 minutes every game and is the star of her team. But the real story isn’t about wins or points.

It’s about a young woman who has a long-term health problem that her old school didn’t take seriously.

Cotie McMahon shows Ole Miss why she’s the most complete player

Tennessee and Ole Miss are waiting for a new date for their game that was postponed because of bad weather. Meanwhile, Cotie McMahon’s dominance against Missouri is still being talked about in the conference.

McMahon didn’t just score; she also had 12 rebounds and five assists, which meant she was in charge of the whole game. She was the first Rebel to score 30 points this season, and she did it in a big way.

Things got scary for the other team in the second half. McMahon scored 24 of her 33 points after the break, making 9 of 13 shots from the field.

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But here’s the most impressive part.

While McMahon was scoring a lot, her team’s defense was just as strong. Missouri’s offense was shut down by Ole Miss, which made them shoot only 34 percent and go 4-for-20 from three.

This season, she has scored double digits in 11 games, making her Ole Miss’s main offensive engine while keeping the kind of all-around versatility that she didn’t have at Ohio State. The difference between her old program’s focus on conditioning and Ole Miss’s focus on whole-player development shows how much belief and good medical care can do.